Halloween Horror Nights 32 (UOR) - Speculation & Rumors

[Living Dead Dude]

I wouldn’t be surprised if M3GAN shows up in a future horror of Blumhouse

 

[salismetho]

I wouldn’t be surprised if M3GAN shows up in a future horror of Blumhouse

FYI this is Hollywood's CityWalk, not Orlando. And having M3GAN appear alongside Chucky would feel sorta redundant in my opinion but I could be wrong. At any rate, this video is likely not an indication of what may appear at the event, certainly not for Orlando

 

[shiekra38]

 

[TheCodeMan95]

This may be a dumb question - and maybe you all don't know, but is there really any benefit for Uni bringing current-year horror to the event? Other than it being Blumhouse and being easy to get?

I mean, I can't imagine it results in more interest from the general public.

The Black Phone was a great movie, but it felt a bit shoehorned into the event.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

This may be a dumb question - and maybe you all don't know, but is there really any benefit for Uni bringing current-year horror to the event? Other than it being Blumhouse and being easy to get?

I mean, I can't imagine it results in more interest from the general public.

The Black Phone was a great movie, but it felt a bit shoehorned into the event.

The corporate executive in Comcast HQ wants the "synergy machine" to blend all divisions of the company. IPs can be used either to promote the event by generating ticket sales (Stranger Things) or utilize the event to promote their own stuff (Blumhouse/Random Chucky photo ops).

 

[ReelJustice]

2022 felt like a very original-heavy year. I have a feeling 2023 is gonna try to compensate for that by featuring well-known IPs that even non-horror fans are familiar with.

I think by necessity, they will have to remain original heavy, or at worst, an equal balance.

Regarding ops, I think a great many people need to get over their aversion to waiting in lines. You may find that they are not as bad as you think. Express culture and "instant gratification" have had a negative impact.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

I think by necessity, they will have to remain original heavy, or at worst, an equal balance.

Regarding ops, I think a great many people need to get over their aversion to waiting in lines. You may find that they are not as bad as you think. Express culture and "instant gratification" have had a negative impact.

I have no problem with waiting in line. I have a problem waiting in an inefficient line with 1 cashier and 1 person serving food when charging nearly $10 for a potato on a stick. I have a problem with waiting in line and finding out that the haunted house I just waited for wasn't staffed properly (aka Hellblock this past year).

Again, the event is a world-class quality offering in theming/design that operates like it did back when it was mostly a locals event.

My argument/complaint about express isn't about "instant gratification", it's marketed as a product that can help reduce your wait time by half, not immediate access. My complaint is focused on how after years after operating the event they can't seem to operate it efficiently from day 1.

 

[rageofthegods]

This may be a dumb question - and maybe you all don't know, but is there really any benefit for Uni bringing current-year horror to the event? Other than it being Blumhouse and being easy to get?

I mean, I can't imagine it results in more interest from the general public.

The Black Phone was a great movie, but it felt a bit shoehorned into the event.

I have no idea what the metrics look like but I have to imagine that it does actually benefit the event to have big movies from that year represented. Remember, "cross-promotion" cuts both ways. Sure, it helps the movie to have an HHN house, but it also benefits HHN to have a house based on a movie that came out the same year and had a $50m marketing campaign building awareness behind it. It might not appeal to all of us but to a GA member who doesn't follow things very closely or is only a casual fan of horror or is very young and is only just starting to get into the genre, it probably means something (and remember, these movies are usually pretty big. The Black Phone was the third highest grossing horror film of 2022!).

That's why they go after stuff like Evil Dead in 2013 and this year, or Jigsaw in 2017, even though those are outside IP. Part of it is that they're established brands, yes, and having a new movie coming out probably makes negotiations easier, but also part of it is that HHN gets to piggyback off of Lionsgate or New Line's marketing campaign.

 

[Bort]

This may be a dumb question - and maybe you all don't know, but is there really any benefit for Uni bringing current-year horror to the event? Other than it being Blumhouse and being easy to get?

I mean, I can't imagine it results in more interest from the general public.

The Black Phone was a great movie, but it felt a bit shoehorned into the event.

This is a very, very informal observation, but the queue for Blumhouse felt like it had the lowest median age of guests in it. I think "pop culture horror" is a strong driver for younger crowds, akin to how a lot of 80s/90s kids really gravitated to Ghostbusters.

Re "synergy": I watched both Blumhouse movies this summer purely because they were coming to HHN. The Black Phone has had enough of a positive buzz that maybe I would watch it on my own somewhere in the future even if it wasn't at the event, but there's no chance in hell I'd have watched Freaky just for fun.

 

[Orwellian Wiress]

I feel like The Weeknd is Uni pandering to the teenage audience. The same demographic that usually goes to HHN to show off how tough they are in front of friends or hold hands with their crush when they get scared. This might sound like a little bit of a stretch, but stick with me. If I was Universal and I wanted to continue pandering to teens, I would try and get IPs that have a reputation for being "extreme" or controversial, like It or Saw. Maybe this is just how my mind works, or it's a business strategy that might be worth looking into.

 

[Tobias]

I feel like The Weeknd is Uni pandering to the teenage audience. The same demographic that usually goes to HHN to show off how tough they are in front of friends or hold hands with their crush when they get scared. This might sound like a little bit of a stretch, but stick with me. If I was Universal and I wanted to continue pandering to teens, I would try and get IPs that have a reputation for being "extreme" or controversial, like It or Saw. Maybe this is just how my mind works, or it's a business strategy that might be worth looking into.

The Weekend was brought in to broaden the audience, folks that might not be into full-on horror, but get the curiosity from horror adjacent. A gateway, of sorts. If you like what he's bringing, then give everything else here a shot, you might like it. It's not pandering to Teenagers since they show up to haunts no matter what, it's pretty much a given at any Haunt, unless there's a chaperone policy in place.

HHN has featured Saw and Jigsaw before, but I don't recall either of them moving the needle like say, Stranger Things. That was an IP that DID bring in big business, more so than pretty much any other IP that's been featured at the event, and ST is far from being considered "extreme" or controversial at all.

And if I'm being honest, if one tries going after IP's that are actually "extreme" or controversial, the audience for those are going to be incredibly niche and they're not even gonna' be teens. (Saw and IT don't even appear as a blip in this kind of category.) Hence why you're not going to see them amongst a multitude of other reasons.

 

[TheCodeMan95]

I think by necessity, they will have to remain original heavy, or at worst, an equal balance.

I think the equal balance is perfect moving forward. 5/5 is great in my mind.

 

[reeseyNG]

Regarding ops, I think a great many people need to get over their aversion to waiting in lines. You may find that they are not as bad as you think. Express culture and "instant gratification" have had a negative impact.

I agree with you, but also some of the ops decisions this year were so embarrassingly baffling that no amount of patience can excuse them.

 

[DannyPowers]

My argument/complaint about express isn't about "instant gratification", it's marketed as a product that can help reduce your wait time by half, not immediate access.

This was my biggest takeaway from the way they ran the lines at HHN31. Express doesn't mean no line, it means a faster line, and that is NOT what I experienced at all.

 

[Darko]

I will say my experience with express this year has mostly been great. Hadn’t experienced what most on here seem to have. But I also didn’t go on an extremely crowded night either (mostly avoided those this year. Nor did I go on a sold out night. So that may have been a factor.

Also I know I joked earlier about predicting 5 scare zones, but truth be told, I do feel this will be the case from here on out. Ever since 25 they seem to have stuck to this number and my guess is they are sticking to it. Don’t know if locations will ever change again like KKFOS at 28 but the number might be a permanent thing now.

I don’t mind, granted. It’s the quality of the zones that matter, not the number of them. It’s just more of an observation.

 

[HHNFAN123]

I been wondering something maybe someone can help clear it up for me. I don't know if the IP well is getting dry or not. It seems like the white whales (ex. Conjuring, IT, anything with disney ties to it.) wont happen or maybe many years away from happening. If this is the case will we be seeing a major unbalance ratio of originals then IPS the next couple years, until the well isn't as dry or a few white whales are happening. Or will we see more as the same IPS like halloweens, blumhouses TCM ect. as the IPS.

 

[rageofthegods]

I been wondering something maybe someone can help clear it up for me. I don't know if the IP well is getting dry or not. It seems like the white whales (ex. Conjuring, IT, anything with disney ties to it.) wont happen or maybe many years away from happening. If this is the case will we be seeing a major unbalance ratio of originals then IPS the next couple years, until the well isn't as dry or a few white whales are happening. Or will we see more as the same IPS like halloweens, blumhouses TCM ect. as the IPS.

There's still plenty of mid-level stuff that haven't been featured that can be turned into houses (Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and The Grudge are all slightly older IP that could easily come to the event). Music IP is a great opportunity; could you imagine a Nine Inch Nails house? They haven't been able to make IT or The Conjuring work but WB was willing to license Evil Dead, their IP is attainable. And I don't really buy that Netflix will keep all of their IP in-house, even if things like Stranger Things go off the shelf. It's really just Disney that's completely off the table.

More to the point though, new horror IP gets made all the time now. Just this year, we had a slamdunk new horror franchise made with Smile, which they could easily license once a sequel comes around. Paramount is trying to create a horror pod with Walter Hamada. Universal alone has six horror movies coming out next year, and if the Blumhouse/James Wan merger goes through, they alone will possibly be producing eight horror films a year on top of whatever horror flicks Universal get from Jordan Peele, Shyamalan, Universal Monster collabs, and other sources.

I don't think the well will truly dry up, far from it. I'd actually argue we're in a better place IP wise than we were at the beginning of the 2010s, when Hollywood had a year that was all repeat IPs. We're a long way from solely relying on Jason, Freddy and Jigsaw.

 

[Fear2010]

I been wondering something maybe someone can help clear it up for me. I don't know if the IP well is getting dry or not. It seems like the white whales (ex. Conjuring, IT, anything with disney ties to it.) wont happen or maybe many years away from happening. If this is the case will we be seeing a major unbalance ratio of originals then IPS the next couple years, until the well isn't as dry or a few white whales are happening. Or will we see more as the same IPS like halloweens, blumhouses TCM ect. as the IPS.

Even If the outside film IP’s are becoming more difficult to snatch than before, they have their own IP’s to backup with the Monsters, Chucky, the Hitchcock movies, Halloween 1-4, American Werewolf In London, Black Christmas, the Blumhouse movies, and If I’m not mistaken, they now own the rights of the Exorcist.

Another backup they could go for is also music acts that have never been represented at the event like Metallica, Lady Gaga, Slipknot, Iron Maiden, the late Michael Jackson, My Chemical Romance, Nine Inch Nails, and Billie Eilish to name many as I could other than we had before with The Weeknd, Alice Cooper, and Rob Zombie.

Video games are also a good reach of a backup too. As much, I’d like to see a year that is completely (or at least almost) original-centric, the IP’s ain’t going nowhere. While the fans in the HHN community don’t like the repeats (or at least not too much), the general public doesn’t care cause most of them don’t go to the event yearly and want to walk through houses they never have a chance to experience before.

 

[shiekra38]

Even If the outside film IP’s are becoming more difficult to snatch than before, they have their own IP’s to backup with the Monsters, Chucky, the Hitchcock movies, Halloween 1-4, American Werewolf In London, Black Christmas, the Blumhouse movies, and If I’m not mistaken, they now own the rights of the Exorcist.

Another backup they could go for is also music acts that have never been represented at the event like Metallica, Lady Gaga, Slipknot, Iron Maiden, the late Michael Jackson, My Chemical Romance, Nine Inch Nails, and Billie Eilish to name many as I could other than we had before with The Weeknd, Alice Cooper, and Rob Zombie.

Video games are also a good reach of a backup too. As much, I’d like to see a year that is completely (or at least almost) original-centric, the IP’s ain’t going nowhere. While the fans in the HHN community don’t like the repeats (or at least not too much), the general public doesn’t care cause most of them don’t go to the event yearly and want to walk through houses they never have a chance to experience before.

If they do a Gaga house, I won't complain about anything at HHN ever again

I say that cause I know they wont

AHS was enough to make me fanboy out

I just picture all the Alexander McQueen inspired costumes and I...oooooh

The Chromatica Ball really was an exploration on "grief" and "trauma" showcased through abstract ideas and metaphor

I could see her wanting to explore some topic like that through a house...would it be appropriate for HHN? idk...but it would be dope

 

[Bort]

I've been debating on this all day and can't come up with a clear winner, so I'll ask the audience. Which trip would you pick for HHN this year if you were on a quick fly in, fly out weekend vacation?

A. Just Saturday in September w/ express (not opening weekend)

B. Just Saturday in September w/ non-private RIP Tour

C. Saturday and Sunday of Indigenous/Columbus Weekend w/ express only one night